Updated 7:58 pm, Thursday, September 10, 2015

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray rolled out his latest push to create more affordable housing in the city, this time an expansion of the Multifamily Tax Exemption program.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray rolled out his latest push to create more affordable housing in the city, this time an expansion of the Multifamily Tax Exemption program.

Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO, SEATTLEPI.COM

Mayor releases latest proposal in plan for affordable Seattle housing

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In his latest push to move forward on recommendations for creating more affordable housing in Seattle, Mayor Ed Murray announced Thursday a proposal to expand an affordable housing tax-exemption program.

The move is just one of several that came out of the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda advisory committee's recommendations, released in July.

Overall, Murray's lofty goal is 50,000 new housing units in 10 years, with 20,000 of those considered affordable, an effort aimed at dealing with what many have called the greatest housing crisis in the area since just after World War II.

"We must ensure that there are affordable homes for people looking to raise families in walkable, mixed-income neighborhoods near transit and job centers," Murray said in a Thursday morning news release about the latest proposal.

The city expects that 120,000 people will move to Seattle in the next 20 years -- that amounts to about 70,000 households -- and Murray has said he'd like to have room for those people.

The expanded Multifamily Tax Exemption program would require 25 percent of new multifamily units to be affordable in order to get the exemption, up from the current 20 percent, and would make more parts of Seattle eligible for the program.

Based on developments already in progress, the expansion could add 179 affordable units (1,918 are in process already), said Todd Burley, communication director with the Seattle Office of Housing.

Murray's proposal would also remove the 2016 expiration of the program, pushing it toward becoming permanent.

Tenants of these units average a savings of $400 to $600 per month over market-rate housing, the Mayor's Office said in the release.

But as positive and lofty as all this sounds, these units won't be cheap forever.

The tax-exemption program, first adopted in 1998, has a 12-year expiration on any exemption granted.

In all likelihood, owners would raise rents to market rates once that exemption expires, Burley said.

Still, almost as many affordable apartments are about to become available as are already active in the program and, if Murray's latest proposal passes the City Council, the program has the potential to expand significantly.

"So, that's 12 years of kind of predictable affordability for people (in those units)," Burley said.

Murray's draft legislation is the latest in a sweeping plan to triple production of housing in the next 10 years, but it's not like Seattle hasn't been working on the issue for decades.

City programs dating back to the 1980s have helped create roughly 15,000 units of affordable, rent- and income-restricted housing, according to data provided by the Seattle Office of Housing.

Most of those units are either studios or one-bedroom apartments, and are intended for renters earning less than 60 percent of area median income (60 percent of AMI is roughly $37,680 today).

A lot of people would love to get into an apartment for $600 a month less than market rate.

The city estimates that more than 45,000 households pay more than half their incomes in rent. Ideally, a rent is considered affordable if it takes up 30 percent or less of a household's income.

A crisis indeed.

And even with the city's full force effort to step up housing production, it's no secret that the need is bigger than what can be done.

"The reality is that (the amount of affordable housing) still won't reach the need," Burley said. "But this makes a pretty big dent."

A big dent, perhaps, but critics have argued that the mayor's plan will take too long to generate housing that's already desperately needed.

Jon Grant, who was part of the 28-member HALA advisory committee, rolled out an alternative to Murray's plan and immediately got support from council members Nick Licata and Kshama Sawant. Grant argued that his plan could bring affordable housing to market faster than the mayor's efforts.

Both Sawant and Licata also support pushing state lawmakers to lift a ban on rent control and allow the city to impose some form of the restriction.